‘Society still views parenthood as a private affair which should not affect academic work.’
Photograph: lolostock/Alamy

I started university, aged 19, with my12-week-old baby. While other freshers were getting to know each other, I was squeezing my breasts into a pump and cursing the price of nappies. My life as an Oxford student and mum was so unexpected that one student thought the “baby” I talked about was a doll. It’s 2019: women earn scholarships while pregnant and mothers study at top universities while raising children, but the existence of student parents still goes unacknowledged.

I crammed a full academic schedule into my daughter’s nursery hours. It was exhausting. I breastfed at 5am while trying to finish essays. My tutors were very kind but, as an institution, Oxford does not expect you to be a mother. More than 700 Oxford students had children in 2016, but many feel they are not on the university’s radar. Ash Mohanaprakas, who discovered she was pregnant during her undergraduate degree, says she felt “constantly lonely” trying to reconcile motherhood with her studies.

“I almost expected to be disowned,” she says. “My mum had been so proud of me. Now, she was asking me to hide when her gossipy friend visited.”

Already facing rejection from her community, Mohanaprakas struggled to cope financially at Oxford with her son. Unable to get childcare support from student finance, she was also barred from the university hardship fund, which regards childcare as a pre-planned circumstance. This rhetoric risks discounting whole groups of people – lone parents who lack a partner’s income, students with unexpected pregnancies, those who can’t afford childcare – from places they have gained on merit. Mohanaprakas could only afford two days of childcare a week for her son, which gave her just enough time to go to tutorials. She cared for him the rest of the week and wrote her essays at night.

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While the university supports staff with parenting responsibilities – it has a £5,000 fund for returning carers – students with identical needs can feel overlooked. “I couldn’t find a place to breastfeed,” says Anna Sarkissian, who returned to her DPhil in anthropology at Oxford when her daughter was four months old. “I pumped milk in a communal toilet, trying not to touch anything, while people banged on the door outside.

“It took a long time just to find somewhere to nurse and work. Eventually my department found me a small office, which was great, but you have to push for everything you need to be able to complete your degree. As student parents, we’re already overtaxed. We’re just trying to survive.”

‘It’s difficult for women in academia. Once you have kids, people doubt your level of commitment.’ Photograph: Peter Barritt/Alamy

Sixty per cent of student parents have considered leaving their course, a number which rises to 65% for single parents. Few parents can study during evenings and weekends when childcare providers are closed, giving us less time to complete tasks than other students. It’s also physically tiring. Sleep technology company Simba found that parents lose 50 nights of sleep in the first year of their child’s life. Despite these access barriers, society still views parenthood as a private affair which should not affect academic work.

“I worry that other researchers see motherhood as this frivolous thing,” says Sarkissian. “It’s difficult for women in academia. Once you have kids, people doubt your level of commitment. If I had to wash my breast pump in my department’s kitchen, I’d rush to do it as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to run into any of my colleagues. I had this fear people would think I was distracted or not working hard enough. There’s still a stigma surrounding breastfeeding; it’s viewed as a private activity which doesn’t belong in the workplace.”

Student parents face specific financial pressures. For Sarkissian, UK childcare fees – around £12,000 a year – are unaffordable, and this is with the university’s discounted rate. The family are considering travelling back to Canada where they can afford to live, and where childcare is sufficiently subsidised.

“If I didn’t have a partner supporting me, I couldn’t do this degree. It’s 100% contingent on my husband being able to take time off from paid employment and take care of the baby during the day.”

For single parent Summer Qassim, waking up at 4.30am is how she balances her master’s degree with caring for her two children, aged six and seven. “It asks a lot of my body,” she says. “If I have a 9.30am seminar, everything has to be done by 6.30am, before I get the kids ready for school.”

Where a partner could help in the absence of affordable childcare, Qassim lacks support. “I had to get neighbours to sit with my kids during their school holidays, when I had classes,” she says. “I felt awful. Someone suggested setting up a childcare camp in my college, but I was the only student who needed it. This is where funding can really help single parents, but most funding doesn’t acknowledge children. There’s this assumption that if you have kids, it’s your responsibility and you’re on your own.”

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While Qassim describes her department as “great”, with professors who changed class schedules for her and lent her books, she believes universities need to recognise student parents as a minority. “I bet there are so many students with children who haven’t even thought about applying. I want them to know that they can, and it won’t be easy, but it’s possible.”

Mohanaprakas, who graduated in 2014, says: “I want to show women in my position that they can achieve anything they want.” Observing the determination of student parents, it’s clear that pregnancy is not a barrier. But the onus should not be entirely on individuals to prove their children will not get in the way of systems that could easily be more accessible and welcoming.

Student parents make fantastic students. You can’t balance a degree and the overwhelming job of parenting without being hardworking and resilient. I’m even more determined to succeed now I’m studying for my daughter’s future, as well as my own.